The Giants third baseman has bounced back from a slow start, but should you be buying him in fantasy leagues?

For those who missed the inaugural installment of The Buyer’s Guide last week (which can be found here), allow me to offer a brief outline of what we do in this space every Monday. The Buyer’s Guide breaks down the performance of an individual player in an attempt to determine if fantasy owners should buy, hold, or sell. Occasionally, I have a player in mind to highlight, but I’m also committed to featuring players y’all suggest in the comments or on Twitter.

On Friday, Mike Gianella released his latest mixed league Bid Limits, which spurred an idea from Bret Sayre called Model Portfolios, wherein the fantasy staff (and anyone else on the BP roster who wants to participate) will create their own team within the confines of a standard 23-man, $260 budget. The roster being constructed includes: C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, CI, MI, OFx5, UTx2, and Px9 along with the following standards issued by Sayre:

In the debut edition of this series, the fantasy team looks at players who could outperform their PECOTA projections in batting average.

One of the fun ways we all try to outsmart our opponents in fantasy is by searching for hidden value in players who, for one reason or another, we suspect have the ability to outpace their projections (and, relatedly, their draft cost). Our Darkhorses series features staff picks for players who could very well outpace their PECOTA projections for the year and finish at the top of one of the standard five-by-five categories. We’ve all picked one player currently projected by PECOTA to fall just shy of the top 10 (in the 11 to 25 range) and one longer shot player currently projected outside of the top 25. We’ll take a look at offense this week and pitching next. To kick things off here is a bounty of hidden treasure in the batting average department:

The Rangers contact a seemingly forgotten veteran starter, while the Mets and Pablo Sandoval put the skids on a couple of reports.

Rangers reached out to Paul Maholm
Several days ago, we learned that Rangers starter Derek Holland had suffered a knee injury in a fall at his home, and details later surfaced that it had happened when he tripped over his dog. The left-hander needed microfracture surgery on his left knee, so the Rangers must prepare to do without Holland at least through the All-Star break and possibly deeper into the summer.

Right-hander Nick Tepesch is the most likely candidate from within the organization, but it appears that general manager Jon Daniels is at least exploring the possibility of adding a veteran free agent starter. That news comes straight from one of the still-unemployed hurlers: former Braves southpaw Paul Maholm, who told ESPN and SiriusXM’s Jim Bowden that the Rangers are among the clubs that have phoned his agent.

Good friend Bill Hanstock was watching old baseball highlights on YouTube this morning, just like he imagined when he graduated from college, and alerted us to this spectacular tag avoidance from the year 2009, a year most notable for being the year before every single act of human motion was instantly converted into a GIF. (Here is a GIF of a man sleeping.) Watch this baseball player avoid this tag, and then keep reading to find out the awesome twist in the story:

For one night, the Giants' pitching wasn't dominant, but it didn't change a thing, and Detroit dropped its third in a row.

Have you ever had déjà, déjà, déjà, déjà vu? Because it sorta seems as if I've written this recap before. The Tigers’ latest 2-0 loss came against a new starter in a new setting, but the outcome was SSDD—same score, different day—for Detroit. The Tigers, who were shut out just two times during the regular season, have now been shut out two times in their past two games, becoming the first team to fail to score in consecutive World Series games since the 1966 Dodgers (and the first AL team to do it since the 1919 White Sox, who didn’t want to win).

The tater trots for Game 1 of the 2012 World Series, including Pablo Sandoval's three home runs.

After the Giants and Cardinals combined for two home runs over their final three games of the National League Championship Series (with two of those games played in San Francisco), it was a bit hard to predict a home run barrage in Game 1 of the World Series. Especially with the Tigers throwing Justin Verlander.